Cold Burn
by ncfan
Summary: -Rukia, Byakuya- Rukia doesn't understand at all.


**Characters**: Rukia, Byakuya**  
Summary**: Rukia doesn't understand at all.**  
Pairings**: Past ByaHisa**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: None**  
Timeline**: pre-manga**  
Author's Note**: Poor Rukia. This must have been such an awful position for her to find herself in. Again, the style is outside the norm; I'm really starting to enjoy writing like this.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

A deep winter has settled over the confines of the Kuchiki family estate. Though no snow falls in the boughs of trees decked out in the apparel of summer, there is still a chill in the air and skimmed across the surface of the water that only two can feel. Winter's come early across the skin.

Rukia, who is normally able to dredge so much more confidence into herself, can only feel it wane a little more with each passing day. This situation is bewildering, a hopeless maze that she is at a loss to navigate. She doesn't know what to make of him.

This is the man who has taken her from the Academy and has sent her reeling into another world: Kuchiki Byakuya, head of the Kuchiki clan, Shinigami. This is what Rukia knows of him: recently widowed, tall, distant, remote, with a mouth that almost never forms words (at least not to be received by her) and a smooth face carved in alabaster. Byakuya volunteers nothing of himself to be absorbed by her; Rukia merely looks at him, hears snatches from the servants, and fills in the blanks herself. Whether her guesses are accurate she can not know.

Sister, they say he wants. Sure. Rukia remembers well the reason she was given for the proposed adoption. _"You bear a truly uncanny resemblance to Hisana-sama, our master's late wife."_ Only a fool would hear that and not read into it, and Rukia is nobody's fool. That's suspicious in itself. She doesn't know this man well; she doesn't know his habits or inclinations. Rukia hears those words and suspects the obvious thing, her mind having jumped to the most straightforward of conclusions.

Lying awake at night in her room, he heart caught in her throat like a fly in the web, Rukia waits for the telltale sound of footsteps outside and the door opening to let light spill through the crack. When that never happens, Rukia begins to rethink her place here (_Though the shadow of what _might_ happen still hangs over her_).

She doesn't understand at all.

Maybe he does want a sister. Maybe Byakuya simply wants company to fill up the long, solitary hours of his life now that his wife has passed beyond. Rukia doesn't know; she can't pretend to really know him well enough to discern his motives (_Which is why she still listens for feet against wood at night_).

If he wanted her there at all, Byakuya has an odd way of showing it.

He doesn't look at her. He _never_ looks at her. Someone else in Rukia's position would tell herself that if she really resembles his late wife it might simply be too painful for him to look at her, but Rukia doesn't think like that. She takes the obvious answer and if it doesn't satisfy her she turns it inside out and tries to find another one on its underbelly.

Her resemblance to Hisana, however uncanny, can not possibly be a sufficient reason for Byakuya to shut himself off from her. Just because someone looks like someone else, that doesn't mean that the behaviors of others towards her should be altered.

Rukia can't grasp the situation she's in. She can't grasp it, and she can't accept it. But very soon, she starts to feel herself drowned by it. _Well, not drowned so much as locked in ice herself._

She gets up. (_The room is comfortably warm as usual, but somehow she feels cold even here.)_

Some time during the day, she runs into him. (_Rukia didn't mean to—her life in the Kuchiki estate when not on-duty in the Thirteenth consists mainly of avoiding Byakuya at all costs. She didn't mean to.)_

And he stares straight through her. (_Eyes like spectacles, transparent and yet opaque, give little sign that he even sees her._)

When Byakuya sees her, he doesn't always deny the reality of her presence. And that is worse, truly worse than being ignored.

(_Eyes skim above her head or watch the progress of her feet with fascination—more often the former than the latter; it wouldn't do for a noble to have his head constantly bowed, after all. He says a few terse words and leaves, the cold clinging to his clothes somehow still lingering on afterwards. If Rukia squints, she thinks she can see frosted patterns emerging on the windows.)_

The wake of his presence leaves burns on her skin that only she can see. Rukia touches them, and they're so, so cold to the touch. Like someone's been pressing ice against her skin for so long that it leaves lesions and jutting sores afterwards. The little mouths on Rukia's skin stare back at her with puckered eyelids—veins pulse beneath.

She doesn't understand. Truly, Rukia understands.

Hers is the zanpakuto that sings softly of ice and snow.

It should be Byakuya who sports ice on his clothes, cold burns on his cheeks and arms. Shouldn't it?

(_Maybe he does and he just doesn't show it. Maybe he feels all of this just as keenly as her. Rukia will never know, because she can't ask._

_She can't.)_


End file.
